Image Visually Meaningful Cryptography Based on Julia Set Generating and Information Hiding

Secret and private image security storage and fast transmission are a relatively concerned issue in the field of information security. In existed image encryption schemes, plain image is transformed to meaningless random noise signal which is vulnerable to attack with suspicion. Image visually meaningful cryptography (IVMC) based on information hiding is difficult to hide large size images because of limited hiding capacity. To solve this problem,a new IVMC based on Julia set images (JSI) generating and information hiding was proposed.In this solution, firstly, JSI are generated by utilizing Julia set generating parameters (JSGP) and specific pixel coloring scheme (SPCS), as keys, escape-time algorithm (ETA). Then the secret image or the encrypted secret image is embedded into JSI’s detail-rich small areas to form a beautiful stego-JSI, so as to achieve the purpose of IVMC. The receiver can use the same JSGP and SPCS keys to generate the same cover-JSI, which greatly facilitates the extraction and decryption of the encrypted image. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed method has good artistic beauty, high hiding capacity, good imperceptibility, strong anti-compression performance and good anti-steganalysis ability, as well as large key space and good key sensitivity.